Dnieper RiverUkrainian Dnipro, Russian Dnepr, Belorussian DneproBelarusian Dnyapro, ancient (Greek) Borysthenes, river of Europe, the fourth longest after the Volga, Danube, and Ural. It is 1,367 miles (2,200 kilometres) in length and drains an area of about 195,000 square miles (505,000 square kilometres).

The Dnieper rises at an altitude of about 720 feet (220 metres) in a small peat bog on the southern slope of the Valdai Hills of Russia, about 150 miles west of Moscow, and flows in a generally southerly direction through western Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine to the Black Sea. For the first 300 miles, it passes through the Smolensk oblast (provinceregion) of Russia, first to the south and then to the west; near Orsha it turns south once more and for the next 370 miles flows through Belarus. Finally, it flows through Ukrainian territory: south to Kiev, southeast from Kiev to Dnipropetrovsk, and then south-southwest to the Black Sea.

The Dnieper watershed includes the Volyn-Podilsk Upland, the Belarusian Ridge, the Valdai Hills, the Central Russian Upland, and the Smolensk-Moscow Upland. The centre of the basin consists of broad lowlands. Within the forest area and to some extent within the forest steppe area, the basin is covered with morainic and fluvioglacial deposits; on the steppe it is covered with loess. In some places, where the basin borders upon the basins of the Bug and the Western Dvina rivers, there is a flat swampy area. This facilitated the cutting of connecting water routes from the Dnieper to neighbouring rivers even in ancient times. At the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th, the Dnieper was connected to the Baltic Sea by several canals: the Dnieper–Bug Canal, running by way of the Pripet, Bug, and Vistula rivers; the Ahinski Canal by way of the Pripet and the Neman; and the Byarezina water system by way of the Byarezina and the Western Dvina. These canals later became obsolete.

Physical features

Physiography

The Dnieper is customarily divided into three parts: the upper Dnieper as far as Kiev, the middle Dnieper from Kiev to Zaporizhzhya (Ukraine), and the lower Dnieper from Zaporizhzhya to the mouth. The basin of the upper Dnieper is mainly within a forest area where peat-podzolic soils predominate (replaced in the southern portion of the upper course by podzolized gray forest soils). The upper Dnieper is characterized by excessive moisture and great swampiness. The river network is well developed in this area, where about four-fifths of the basin’s annual runoff forms and the longest tributaries with the greatest runoff (the Byarezina, Sozh, Pripet, Tetriv, and Desna) flow. The basin of the middle Dnieper is in a forest steppe area with black earth. Forests stand in the watersheds and along the river valleys. The river network is less dense there, and the rivers carry comparatively less water. The principal tributaries of the middle Dnieper are the Ros, Sula, Pesl, Vorskla, and Samara. The lower Dnieper basin lies within the Black Sea Lowland, in the black-soil steppe area, which has now been completely plowed up. The grassy steppe vegetation has been preserved only in the nature reserves and preserves and in old ravines and gullies. Near the Black Sea there is wormwood–fescue vegetation of the semiarid type in chestnut brown soil mixed with saline solonetz and solonchak soils. The lower Dnieper passes through a region of insufficient moisture, where irrigation is employed. The river network there consists for the most part of intermittent streams, the beds of which are ravines that fill with water in the spring and after torrential rains. The largest tributary of this section is the Inhulets.

From its source to Dorogobuzh, Russia, the Dnieper is a small river flowing past low wooded and, in some places, swampy banks. Downstream the banks rise, and the width of the valley to Orsha varies for the most part from two to six miles, narrowing to less than half a mile in places. Its bed, from 130 to 400 feet wide, is sinuous, with numerous sandbanks. Above Orsha the Dnieper crosses a layer of Devonian limestone, forming a series of rapids that hamper navigation. From Orsha to Shklow, Belarus, the Dnieper flows between raised, sometimes steep banks overgrown with woods; the left bank becomes lower, whereas the right remains high as far as the confluence with the Sozh River (where the Dnieper enters Ukraine). The valley is wide on this stretch, reaching six to nine miles in places. The riverbed from Orsha to Mahilyow (Belarus) is relatively straight; below Mahilyow the Dnieper splits into several channels, producing many islands and sandbanks. The width of the river from Orsha to the confluence with the Sozh ranges from 260 to 1,300 feet, and from the mouth of the Sozh to the mouth of the Pripet River it is from 1,600 to 2,000 feet. The vegetation along the banks of the upper Dnieper consists mainly of wide floodplain meadows, thickets of willows and alders, and old lowland marshes.

Marked asymmetry of the river valley is characteristic of the middle Dnieper. The steep, high right bank (up to 260 feet above the river) forms the escarpment of the Volyn-Podilsk Upland, which stretches along the entire middle course of the river. The low and sloping left bank is formed by broad, ancient terraces. Isolated hills, rising over 300 feet, appear on the low-lying left bank. On the southern portion of the middle Dnieper, the river cuts through the Ukrainian crystalline massif and flows for 56 miles in a narrow, almost unterraced valley bounded by high, rocky banks. The Dnieper Rapids, which for centuries prevented continuous navigation, were once located there. The rapids were flooded by the backwaters of the Dnieper hydroelectric power station dam, above Zaporizhzhya, which raised the level of the river by 130 feet, backed its waters up to Dnipropetrovsk, and formed the Dnieper Reservoir.

Below Zaporizhzhya the Dnieper again passes into a wide valley with a high right bank (130 feet near Nikopol, 260 feet near Kherson). The slopes of the river there are very slight. Before the development of the Kakhovka Reservoir, the waters of which inundated a vast territory, the Dnieper split into numerous streams; flat swampy islands, overgrown with floodplain vegetation and reeds, lay among the channels. Today much of this is hidden under the waters of the reservoir. Below Kherson the Dnieper forms a delta, the many streams of which flow into the Dnieper estuary. Some have been deepened for navigational purposes.

Hydrology

The flow characteristics of the Dnieper have been thoroughly studied. Data on the river’s annual runoff date to 1818, while estimates of the maximum discharges—computed from the old high-water marks—extend back more than 250 years. Hundreds of hydrometric stations and posts operate in the Dnieper basin. Under natural conditions the Dnieper had high flows during the spring and fall and low flows during the summer and winter; but dams have altered this regime, so that the river now has pronounced high flows in spring, diminishing flows in summer, and low flows from September to March. Spring snowmelt in the river’s upper basin provides the majority of the annual discharge. About 60 percent of the annual runoff occurs from March to May. The period of stable ice on open water begins in the upper Dnieper at the beginning of December and in the lower Dnieper at the end of December. Thaw starts at the beginning of April in the upper course and in early March in the lower course. The average annual flow of the river at its mouth is some 59,000 cubic feet (about 1,670 cubic metres) per second; for individual years, the variations in runoff can be considerable. The water of the Dnieper is low in minerals and is soft. In a year the river carries an average of 8.6 million tons of dissolved matter to the sea.

Climate

The climate of the Dnieper basin is, on the whole, temperate and much milder and damper than that of regions to the east in southwestern Russia located at the same latitude. The continental nature of the climate increases from northwest to southeast. The mean annual air temperature is 41° F (5° C) in the upper part of the basin, 45° F (7° C) in the middle (near Kiev), and 50° F (10° C) in the lower reaches of the Dnieper. Winters in the northeast of the basin are long and persistent, whereas in the south they are shorter and milder with frequent thaws; in the north the mean temperature in January is 16° F (-9° C) and in the south 27° F (-3° C). The amount of precipitation decreases from north to south. On the slopes of the Valdai Hills and the Minsk Upland, annual precipitation is about 30–32 inches (760–810 millimetres), while in the lower Dnieper region it is about 18 inches. The mean annual precipitation for the upper Dnieper basin (above Kiev) is about 28 inches. The precipitation average for the entire basin is about 27 inches, with about half falling as rain during the summer and fall.

Plant and animal life

The Dnieper has diverse aquatic flora and fauna. In its upper course the plankton consist mainly of diatom and protococcal algae, rotifers, and Bosmina. Blue-green algae come from the mouth of the Pripet. In its lower course the amount of plankton decreases sharply under the influence of the reservoirs. More than 60 species of fish live in the Dnieper. Commercially important species include pike, roach, chub, ide, rudd, rapfen, tench, barbel, alburnum, golden shiner, goldfish, carp, catfish, burbot, pike perch, perch, and ruff. In the spring the lower Dnieper serves as a habitat for migratory and semimigratory fish (sturgeon, herring, roach, and others). The reservoirs have been stocked artificially with fish of commercial importance, including whitefish, pike perch, golden shiner, and carp.

History and economy

The Dnieper basin has been populated since ancient times. It was of central importance in the history of the peoples of eastern Europe, particularly in the founding of the ancient Kievan state. Along this waterway a system of river routes developed in the 4th to 6th century AD as a “route from the Varangians to the Greeks,” connecting the Black Sea with the Baltic and linking the Slavs with both the Mediterranean and the Baltic peoples. Half of the Dnieper (about 700 miles) borders or passes through Ukrainian territory, and the river is for the Ukrainians the same kind of national symbol that the Volga River is for the Russians.

The first historical information about the Dnieper is recorded by the Greek historian Herodotus (5th century BC); the river is also mentioned later by the ancient writers Strabo and Pliny the Younger. It was first depicted on a map drawn by Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD. Instrument surveys of the Dnieper were begun early in the 18th century.

Under the Soviets, in line with the general plan for water management, much work was undertaken for the multipurpose exploitation of the Dnieper’s water resources. In 1932, in accordance with the Soviet Union’s electrification plan, the river’s first hydroelectric power station was completed at Zaporizhzhya in the region of the rapids. It was the largest power station in Europe until the construction of the huge power stations on the Volga in the 1950s. Completely destroyed by the German army during World War II, the dam was rebuilt in 1947, and its capacity increased. Hydroelectric power stations and reservoirs have also been built on the Dnieper at Kiev (completed 1966), Kaniv (1973), Kremenchuk (1961), Dniprodzerzhinsk (1965), and Kakhovka (1958). As a result of their construction, many problems have been solved: a continuous deepwater route from the mouth of the Pripet to the Black Sea has been created; the chronic water shortages in the Donets Basin and Kryvyy Rih industrial regions have been solved; and irrigation of arid lands in southern Ukraine and the Crimea has been made possible.

Regular navigation on the Dnieper extends as far upstream as Orsha, and, when the water is high, to Dorogobuzh. On the upper Dnieper the required depths are maintained by straightening and by dredging. Below the confluence with the Pripet, navigable locks make the passage of modern vessels possible. The principal cargoes are coal, ore, mineral building materials, lumber, and grain. The chief ports are Smolensk, Orsha, Mahilyow, Rechytsa, Loyew, Kiev, Cherkasy, Kremenchuk, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhya, Nikopol, Kakhovka, and Kherson.

The Kryvyy Rih region is supplied with water from the Kakhovka Reservoir by means of the Dnieper–Kryvyy Rih Canal. The North Crimea Canal, which was completed in 1971, originates in the reservoir; the canal, 250 miles long, is designed for irrigation of the steppes of the Black Sea Lowland and the northern Crimea and for the creation of a water route from the Dnieper to the Sea of Azov.

Damming the Dnieper and diverting its waters, however, have radically altered its natural hydrology and ecology. Seasonal flow variations have been reduced, upstream access for anadromous fish has been reduced, effluents from cities and industry (as well as from increased agricultural runoff) have caused pollution, and diversion of water for irrigation and evaporation from reservoirs have lowered the annual outflow of the river by some 20 percent. In addition, the wetlands around the river’s estuary have been seriously damaged by pollution and reduced discharge.